her grief.

* * *

Nora dreamed that she had had the baby after all, but somehow it had crawled away and gotten lost. She went searching for it, wandering through stone castles and the high-ceilinged ballrooms of Ilissa’s palace and the corridors of the English department. Finally she found the baby, wrapped tight in blankets, in Ilissa’s arms. “Give it to me,” Nora demanded. Smiling, Ilissa refused: “This is my baby,” she said. Nora reached out to take the baby back, but all she grasped was an empty blanket. The baby had vanished. “Now see what you’ve done,” Ilissa said.

* * *

Daylight again. It was the gray-haired woman again, back with the cup. Nora took a sip and then pushed it away.

The woman shook her head and said something. She had to repeat it twice before Nora understood. “The master says you’re to drink it all.”

“I will. In a minute.” Nora had to grope for the words. It was almost—not exactly—the way she had felt sometimes at Ilissa’s, as though she had just run out of language. Brain damage, she thought, some kind of aphasia. So much for my career as an English professor.

“Where am I?” Nora asked carefully, and then listened hard to make sure that she understood the response.

“At Lord Aruendiel’s house.”

“The wizard?” Aruendiel, that was the name she hadn’t been able to remember.

“Magician,” the woman said. “He prefers ‘magician.’”

“Are you his wife?”

The woman’s face stiffened, as though she were shocked by the suggestion. “No, I tend house for him.”

“What’s your name?”

“My name is Mrs. Toristel.”

“I remember. He called you when I came.”

“Yes, that was me. Now, drink. It will help you rest.”

Nora nodded. The short conversation had utterly exhausted her.

* * *

Mrs. Toristel came back in the late afternoon with another cup, but this time Nora refused to drink any of it.

“I don’t want to sleep,” she said. “I want to talk to the magician.”

Mrs. Toristel frowned and set the cup on the wooden table next to the bed. “The master’s not here. He probably won’t return until late.”

“I can wait.”

“I’m leaving the house soon to make dinner for my husband. There won’t be anyone here for you to call if you need help.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Mrs. Toristel shrugged her thin shoulders. “I’ll leave your draft here. You’ll want it soon enough.”

The housekeeper was right: As the hours passed, the soreness in Nora’s body grew more persistent. She took inventory. Her right ankle was bound and splinted. The pain in her side whenever she took a deep breath must mean a broken rib. Carefully she felt the bandages on her stomach, right hand, and face. The flesh beneath was tender and hot.

The cramps were gone, and her belly was flat again. Well, as flat as it ever got. She was wearing a long, coarse nightshirt of what looked like unbleached linen. Idly she wondered what had happened to the clothes she had been wearing when she arrived—some silky, embroidered blossom of a nightgown.

The room she lay in now was small, with a ceiling crossed by wooden beams, ornamented with crudely geometric carvings of leaves and flowers. More flowers were painted in a frieze on the walls, much faded; in one corner water damage had washed away the paint and left a brown stain on the plaster. There was one window, a checkerboard of small panes. A mirror hung on the wall opposite the bed. The few pieces of furniture in the room—the bed, a trunk, a small table, and a chair—were made of wood, dark and heavy, and looked very old.

The light faded and the sky outside turned to bluish purple. Nora was almost ready to give up and take the draft when she heard the clop of a horse’s hooves in the courtyard. More time went by before she saw a light through the crack under her door and heard footsteps outside.

The door opened and the magician came through it, carrying a candle in an iron candlestick. When he saw Nora looking up at him, he paused. “You’re awake,” he said, not sounding particularly pleased. “Did you not take the draft?” She had to concentrate to follow his words, just as with Mrs. Toristel.

“No. I want to talk to you.”

“Ah.” Putting the candle on the table, he pulled up the chair and took Nora’s pulse, then probed the wrapping on her ankle. Apparently satisfied, he asked, “How are the bandages? Any leakage?” Nora shook her head. “Good. Mrs. Toristel can change your dressings tomorrow. Except—let me see to this one on your face right now.” He reached over and unfastened the bandage, pulling it carefully away from her cheek. Then he produced a small square mirror from inside his black tunic and held it at an angle, evidently using it to look at her face.

“What are you doing?” Nora asked, raising her hand.

“Don’t touch your face.” From a drawer in the table he took a round clay jar and fresh bandages. He smeared something from the jar on Nora’s cheek—it stung, a little—then checked the mirror again and began to fasten a new bandage, tying it around her head.

“What is the mirror for?” Nora asked.

“It’s to let me see the cuts on your cheek.”

“What do you mean?”

He finished knotting the bandage. “You had a fine collection of rather powerful enchantments on yourself, as I told you once before. I’ve been taking them off over the past few days, a few at a time. This last spell is one of Ilissa’s glamours, rather deeply ingrained by now. It’s meant to modify your appearance. In addition to bringing you up to Ilissa’s own standard of beauty, the spell also camouflages your wound. Hence, the mirror. This particular mirror has certain properties that allow it to reflect what the eye cannot ordinarily see.”

Nora thought about this, framing her next question. “What kinds of spells?”

Aruendiel shook his head. “The whole sorcerer’s cookbook, although of course Ilissa doesn’t use that kind of magic. There were several different glamours. Confusion spells, forgetfulness spells. Love spells. It looked as though she kept adding more magic, spells on top of spells, whenever she wanted to.” He added severely, “Very sloppy—I would have expected better craftsmanship from her.”

“Confusion spells?” she asked carefully, not sure that she had understood everything he had said. He nodded. “Forgetfulness spells? Love spells?” He nodded again.

That would explain a lot. That is, if there were such things as confusion spells or forgetfulness spells or love spells. “Did you take them all off?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “All except this last glamour. If you prefer to retain your current appearance, you can, although I recommend against it. You’ve been exposed to more than enough magic for the present. Too much enchantment sickens the body.”

“I’m still—” She stumbled and had to start again. The magician’s cool gray stare didn’t help her confidence. “I have trouble speaking. I can barely understand what you say.”

Aruendiel shrugged. One shoulder moved more than the other. “She put a translation spell on you, too. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to understand her or the other Faitoren. They speak a version of our common tongue, Ors—in addition to their own language, which I’m sure Ilissa did not permit you to understand. I removed the translation spell last night.”

“We’re not speaking English?” As soon as she said the word “English,” she knew it was true. Her mouth had to reshape itself to pronounce the word, which came out sounding familiar and foreign at the same time.

“No,” he said. “It’s no wonder that you’re having difficulty with Ors now. It’s strange, in fact, that you can speak it at all. You must have picked up some knowledge of the language while you were speaking it under the

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